The seventh session of the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea met in Geneva from March 28 to May 19, 1978, and resumed in New York from August 21 to September 15, 1978.

The charges that air carriers pay for the use of airports and airways to provide international air service have become a source of recurrent and heated controversy between governments. This controversy largely stems from the rapid rise in user charges over the last decade, but it has been fed by the lack of uniformity practiced by some countries in levying these charges. Thus, the relatively specialized issue of user charges involves some important general concerns of international law, such as international economic cooperation (in the matter of arriving at general agreement on what constitutes reasonable charges), discrimination, and most-favorednation treatment.

The fons et origo of much law concerning the continental shelf, the Truman Proclamation of September 28, 1945, declared that in cases where the continental shelf off the coast of the United States extended to the shores of another state or was shared with an adjacent state, the boundary should be determined by the United States and the state concerned “in accordance with equitable principles.” A number of subsequent declarations, such as those of Saudi Arabia and the various coastal sheikhdoms on the Arabian Peninsula, have contained similar statements. In the North Sea Continental Shelf case the International Court of Justice, having found the delimitation provisions of the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf to be inapplicable as between the parties, began its exposition of the basic rules and principles to be applied as follows: “(1) delimitation is to be effected by agreement in accordance with equitable principles.” Although the 1958 Geneva Convention did not explicitly require delimitation to be made in accordance with equitable principles, it has been interpreted as requiring such delimitations. Article 83, paragraph 1 of the Informal Composite Negotiating Text of the Third United Nations Law of the Sea Conference expressly states that the delimitation of the continental shelf between adjacent or opposite states shall be effected by agreement in accordance with equitable principles. Whether or not Article 83, paragraph 1 is eventually accepted, it would seem that notions of equity are likely to continue to play an important part in the determination of continental shelf boundaries.

The material in this section is arranged according to the system employed in the annual Digest of United States Practice in International Law, published by the Department of State.